The Return to Joy [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Our brains desire joy more than any other thing. Let's talk about this beautiful, poetic, promising prophecy of Isaiah. It's magnificent. It's all pointing to Jesus, eight centuries before Jesus would come. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light.

Merry Christmas. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Joy of Every Longing Heart as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource available right now, and it can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org.

That's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860, 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news?

Yes. No matter what you go through, even the driest desert, in Christ, He has made a path, a highway wherein you can always return to joy. And you go through some difficult things in this world, but there is, for those in Christ, a pathway by which you can always return to joy. It's something even a little baby discovers early on that though you might be startled or frightened or sad, that you can always come back to joy. If you don't believe it, then watch this little one in one of my all-time favorite viral YouTube videos of a baby that does not know whether to be terrified or delighted at the sound of a mother blowing her nose. You are made for joy.

It is your design. So you go through hard things, scary things, and your soul is trying to figure out, how do I get back to joy? And so, I want to talk to you about the return to joy in our Advent Series, which we call the Joy of Every Longing Heart, by going to a passage in Isaiah that commentator Alec Mottier has called one of the most beautiful poems ever written, Isaiah 35. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.

He will come and save you. In the eyes of the blind shall be open and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leaf like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. Burning sand shall become a pool in the thirsty ground springs of water.

In the haunt of jackals where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. And a highway shall be there and it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way. Even if they're fools, they shall not go astray.

No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come upon it. They shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransom of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing. The everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away." The prophecy of Isaiah, eight centuries before Christ, foretelling the inheritance of every believer in Christ to have a pathway to everlasting joy. Everlasting joy. Some years ago, Time Magazine produced a special research edition they called The Science of Happiness.

I was rereading it this week. We learned so much through science actually about happiness. Of course, I think there's a distinction between happiness and joy, but for the sake of what they were studying, let's call them the same. And one of the things they realized, of course, is the benefits to our health.

You've heard some of this probably. In 2005, there was a study that found that the happiest people had an average heart rate of six beats fewer per minute. I don't know what that does for you, but it sounds good. And a 2010 study showed that over 10 years, for every one point increased in positive emotions on a five-point scale, so if you envision there's a one is less happy, five fully happy, if over a 10-year period you could increase just one point of being happier on that scale, what they found was that the risk of coronary heart disease dropped 22 percent. Your immune system gets bolstered by joy. Numerous studies have shown you're less likely to develop the common cold if you're happy. Chronic pain diminishes in the presence of joy. A huge study on women with arthritis and fibromyalgia found that those who had more positive emotions felt lower levels of pain, and it is not said often enough, but it's been proven in several different ways, but a 2015 survey by researchers at the London School of Economics and at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, they found that participating in a religious organization was the only social activity associated with sustained happiness. So as we'll talk some today, there is a powerful pathway to joy that is found in the body of Christ and in fellowship with one another and with God, and this beautiful poetic prophecy of joy, of coming joy, of everlasting joy is pointing to the very design of the human brain, of everything in your soul. Dr. Jim Wilder is both a Ph.D. psychologist and theologian of the Masters in Theology, and he's written extensively about what we're learning in this growing body of brain science and spirituality, and he has concluded, quote, our brains desire joy more than any other thing. Let's talk about this beautiful poetic promising prophecy of Isaiah.

It's magnificent. It's all pointing to Jesus, eight centuries before Jesus would come. And what you see in this is that it is a poem, a prophecy about a destination that begins and ends with joy. Look again at verse one. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus.

It shall blossom and rejoice. And then verse 10, the last verse in the chapter, everlasting joy shall be on their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy. The whole flow of this poetic prophecy is toward the promise of everlasting and abundant joy for God's people. It is set with the imagery, I think, both of the Exodus, the people of God were slaves in Egypt.

They were liberated by the miracle of a Passover lamb, blood over their door. So they came out by the blood of the lamb and then went through a wilderness. And there were trying times in the wilderness. It also conveys, when you speak of a wilderness in Old Testament imagery, it conveys also the image of the people of God who were exiled in Babylon in the sixth century BC, and then came back and were restored to Jerusalem and they traveled through a wilderness.

So a wilderness is a dry place. And the promise here is that the wilderness itself will change. The place of drought and barrenness will blossom, that it will become beautiful and spring forth with life.

And what this means for us, children of God, is that the Lord does not need to put you into a different setting or give you a different context in order to restore joy into your life. He is able to make the dry places become flowing with living water. He's able to take whatever wilderness you might be walking through now and make something begin to spring forth like a crocus in the springtime.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Seeing as Jesus Sees. It's the title of Pastor Alan Wright's newest book just released, and it's the giant secret of real transformation. Followers of Christ tend to focus on doing, so we've been told to ask, what would Jesus do? But even our noblest efforts to be more like Jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works.

There's no gospel power in our self-striving. But what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing? Anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of a situation knows that fresh vision changes everything. In his eye-opening new book, Alan Wright invites readers into a new, simple spiritual practice.

A little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day. Jesus, how do you see this? It's a prayer that the Savior loves to answer, because after all, Christ came to be the light of the world. Clear away confusion, win over the darkness, and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six-week, six-week free copy of Pastor Alan Wright's free six-week Seeing as Jesus Sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life.

As you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes, you'll start seeing as Jesus sees, and you're going to love the view. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860, or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. That he's able to transform a wilderness. He can get beauty from ashes.

He can get beauty from ashes. He can take whatever wilderness you're walking through and he can transform it. And we're going to walk through those wilderness times. Wilderness is the place in the imagery of the Old Testament where you feel vulnerable, you feel dry, you feel disconnected.

It is a place you can't fake it, you can't fix it, you can't finance it. You just feel like that you don't know where to turn or what to do, and nothing seems to work, and life seems fruitless, and you seem that everything, every turn you make all feels uncertain. A wilderness is a place like that, and God says, I'm going to make some flowers spring up in the middle of it.

And all of a sudden when you're dry as you're going to start feeling a flow of water, it's going to be refreshing. That's some promise. And this promise of great joy in Isaiah 35, I think it's important to note, does not deny the reality of our adversities. Verse three, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees.

Verse four, say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong. So there are weak hands, there are feeble knees, there are anxious hearts. There are times in which we're weary. There are times in which we've lost our motivation. There are times in which we're disappointed. There are times in which we felt like we can't lift our hands up to do a single task.

There are times in which our knees feel like that they're knocking. There are times in which our hearts are anxious. God is not ignoring or denying or inviting us into some view of life that says that the promise means we'll never go through any troubles or face any negative emotions. That's not what this prophecy is about. Instead, what he says is I'll come to you in the midst of that. You're not going to be stuck in that.

It's not who you are. You're going to walk through some things. You can go through some wildernesses, and I can change a wilderness. And you're going to sometimes feel frail in the midst of it, and I can strengthen you. The promise of this prophecy also includes the transformation of you. Verse five and six, the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame man shall leap like a deer, the tongue and the mute sing for joy. Of course, when Jesus came, He did all these things literally and physically, but it's the imagery of our eyes being opened for every single one of us who have ever stumbled in the darkness, and then this great light, Jesus, has come and opened up the eyes of our hearts to be able to see what we hadn't seen before. And you begin to see more like Jesus. You begin to see hope where you'd only seen discouragement before. And ears that were stopped up to the gospel and couldn't hear the good news and couldn't hear the direction for their life, begin to hear the voice of the Savior. And you begin to be led, and you begin to be filled with a sense of inspiration in the way in which that where you were lame and you couldn't find anything to leap about and lost all your energy, and Christ has come, and there's a way there's a renewal of that. What He's talking about here is a transformation both of the desert and of the one who travels the desert.

Wow. We're talking about the return to joy. And what then is prophesied is a new literal highway that will emerge. Verse 8, a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the way of holiness.

The unclean shall not pass over it. So it's literally a higher path because that's what you need, right? You need a road that's higher than the crags and bogs and swamps below it. You want it elevated. You want it safer.

You want it quicker that way. So it's literally a high way. It's a higher way. And this pathway of holiness is for, the prophecy says, those that are the holy ones. And the unclean shall not pass on it.

Well, what does this mean? Well, in the Old Testament, the language of clean and unclean is largely ceremonial language. So there's a whole bunch of ceremonial laws in the Old Testament. If you look through Leviticus, you'll discover some of these. Now, some of these seem quite arbitrary, but some of them are just fantastic.

But what does it mean? Well, in the Old Testament, the language of clean and unclean is largely ceremonial. And in fact, for example, the Hebrew people were the only ancient people who had a practice of quarantining someone who had an infectious disease. Well, this is, most historians will say, it's part of the reason that the Hebrew people survived because nobody understood germs until somewhere away in the 19th century after Christ. But we're talking about 1500 years before Jesus. And if someone had an infectious oozing wound on their skin, they were quarantined and were called ceremonially unclean, which meant you don't come into the presence of the people of God where you're interacting with people or into the place of God where you're at the temple and this public worship of God. So you're ceremonially unclean. And there are, for the various states of uncleanliness, there are temple rituals and sacrifices that are made. And some of it is giving time for a person to be healed. And some of it is because God gave in the Old Testament a temporary system of offering sacrifices so that the people could know and have assurance that at least temporarily their sin had been paid for as if the punishment for their sin was put upon an innocent animal or there were offerings that were made of gratitude to God. And God has said in his word that he never really was pleased by this.

This wasn't his plan. But what he was doing is he was giving a shadow. He was giving a precursor of what he was going to do in the gospel. So every Passover lamb was pointing to the day that John the baptizer would look and see this Nazarene rabbi and say, behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And the writer of Hebrews would say that one sacrifice of the lamb of God of Jesus, that was what it was all pointing to.

Everything else was just a shadow. But through that process of those sacrifices, you were made ceremonially clean. So the clean people were the ones for whom the blood of the sacrifice had been applied.

That's what this is referencing. So who are the ones who walk on the holy path? They are the holy ones. And you know who that is?

That's you. Every single person in Christ has been once and forever cleansed by the blood of Jesus. And nothing, nothing of any stain of sin remains upon you. And not only that, not only does God not even see your sin anymore, but he also has credited you by the miracle of his grace.

He has credited you. He looks upon you, believer, as if you had lived Jesus's perfectly meritorious life. Alan Wright, our Good News message, the return to joy from the series Joy of Every Longing Heart.

He stayed with us. Pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day right here at Christmas in just a moment. Seeing as Jesus sees, it's the title of Pastor Alan Wright's newest book just released. And it's the giant secret of real transformation. Followers of Christ tend to focus on doing so we've been told to ask, what would Jesus do? But even our noblest efforts to be more like Jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works.

There's no gospel power in our self-striving. But what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing? Anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of a situation knows that fresh vision changes everything. In his eye-opening new book, Alan Wright invites readers into a new simple spiritual practice, a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day. Jesus, how do you see this?

It's a prayer that the Savior loves to answer because after all, Christ came to be the light of the world. Clear away confusion, win over the darkness and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six weeks seeing as Jesus sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life.

As you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes, you'll start seeing as Jesus sees, and you're going to love the view. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here now in the studio with Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day as we are kicking off this Christmas series, Joy of Every Longing Heart. And Pastor Alan, this is the conclusion of part one of The Return to Joy. Well, also Merry Christmas as the day approaches here and, you know, joy to the world.

That's right. Have good news of great joy. And so we're looking back at this beautiful prophecy of Isaiah.

One commentator has called one of the most beautiful poems ever written. And it's about a destination of joy. It is about a beginning and an ending of joy. And I love this from verse 10, everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy.

Christmas is the reminder of what God has done to bring us everlasting joy. Daniel, it's not a denial of adversity. And I know, and I don't want to recognize that some of our listeners may be going through some really difficult times this Christmas season. And even the prophecy of Isaiah, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees. And, you know, I say to those that have an anxious heart, be strong. So sometimes we're weak and sometimes we feel feeble knees and sometimes we have an anxious heart, but there's still a word of promise that joy is coming. And so I'm praying, I'm praying for the abounding joy of the Lord.

There is a way through the wilderness that leads to joy. That matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.